environment Politics: election finance fun with analogies idiots political corruption Republicans scientific consensus
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 28: Hot Air Jokes Aside, What’s Wrong With This Picture?
Popular Mechanics covers the “People are waking up” by running a short interview with Gavin Schmidt, a NASA climatologist. It’s worth reading the whole thing:
Yesterday The New York Times covered a new poll showing that an increasing number of Americans are linking the extreme weather events of the past few years—including the extremely warm March 2012, droughts, and hurricanes—to climate change. We asked Gavin Schmidt, a climate researcher at NASA’s Goddard Institute and a member of PM’s Editorial Board of Advisers, why he thinks this shift is happening, and if it means that policy changes could be on the horizon.
Q: What’s your first reaction to these polling numbers?
A: I am not really surprised. Most people don’t have a very sophisticated grasp of what climate change is, which is completely understandable. But people do have a visceral connection to weather; they talk about it, understand it, and they’re very fond of extremes in weather (in a conversational way.)
Since it was Popular Mechanics, I figured a mechanical analogy would do the trick. Let’s see. Sent April 19:
While it’s good to know that increasing numbers of Americans are connecting the dots between extreme weather and global climate change, it’s unrealistic to expect that the shifting winds of public opinion will lead to changes in our country’s energy and environmental policies.
Why? The answer can be expressed in simple analogical terms.
Policy development in the USA is driven not by public opinion, but by private cash — the vast sums of money required by political campaigns motivate lawmakers far more powerfully than any number of concerned constituents. Unlike cutting-edge hybrid and electric automobiles, our politicians are almost entirely fueled by petroleum. If we as citizens want our nation’s policies to reflect environmental reality and address the climate crisis with the requisite seriousness, it’s not just our technology that needs to change, but the political system that has made a robust response to the climate crisis impossible.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Arctic ice melt assholes denialists idiots military Republicans
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 26: If I Make My Lips Go B-B-B-B-B-B, I Can Pretend To Be A Motorcycle
More on the military plans for a transformed climate, from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Russia, Canada and the United States have the biggest stakes in the Arctic. With its military budget stretched thin by Iraq, Afghanistan and more pressing issues elsewhere, the United States has been something of a reluctant northern power, though its nuclear-powered submarine fleet, which can navigate for months underwater and below the ice cap, remains second to none.
Russia — one-third of which lies within the Arctic Circle — has been the most aggressive in establishing itself as the emerging region’s superpower.
Rob Huebert, an associate political science professor at the University of Calgary in Canada, said Russia has recovered enough from its economic troubles of the 1990s to significantly rebuild its Arctic military capabilities, which were a key to the overall Cold War strategy of the Soviet Union, and has increased its bomber patrols and submarine activity.
He said that has in turn led other Arctic countries — Norway, Denmark and Canada — to resume regional military exercises that they had abandoned or cut back on after the Soviet collapse. Even non-Arctic nations such as France have expressed interest in deploying their militaries to the Arctic.
Don’t ask me to explain the headline of this post. Sent April 17:
It was a mantra for Republicans when discussing proposals to end America’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan: the only authorities worth consulting were the “generals in the field.” But conservatives don’t always revere military opinion. Those same lawmakers will certainly do their best to ignore the fact that our armed forces are hard at work, planning for a geopolitical future transformed by climate change.
Because, of course, it’s another conservative mantra: climate change isn’t real (if it is real, it’s a socialist conspiracy; scientists want to raise our taxes!). Given that the loudest voices rejecting the science of global warming belong to the senators and representatives who once vociferously touted the ultimate authority of our military leaders, how can these legislators possibly recognize the existence of the U.S. Navy’s task force on climate change?
Wouldn’t it be nice if environmental policy was based on scientific reality instead of political ideology?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: armed forces assholes denialists idiots military Republicans
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 24: Paisley and Patchouli
The Minnesota Star-Tribune addresses the newest addition to the Hippie Ranks:
YOKOSUKA, Japan — To the world’s military leaders, the debate over climate change is long over. They are preparing for a new kind of Cold War in the Arctic, anticipating that rising temperatures there will open up a treasure trove of resources, long-dreamed-of sea lanes and a slew of potential conflicts.
By Arctic standards, the region is already buzzing with military activity, and experts believe that will increase significantly in the years ahead.
Last month, Norway wrapped up one of the largest Arctic maneuvers ever — Exercise Cold Response — with 16,300 troops from 14 countries training on the ice for everything from high intensity warfare to terror threats. Attesting to the harsh conditions, five Norwegian troops were killed when their C-130 Hercules aircraft crashed near the summit of Kebnekaise, Sweden’s highest mountain.
The U.S., Canada and Denmark held major exercises two months ago, and in an unprecedented move, the military chiefs of the eight main Arctic powers — Canada, the U.S., Russia, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland — gathered at a Canadian military base last week to specifically discuss regional security issues.
I ought to be able to get a couple more letters out of this story. It’d be fun to mock Darrell Issa even if there was no climate crisis. Sent April 16:
If we are to judge by their plans and strategic preparations, there’s no doubt that America’s military establishment is taking climate change seriously.
This raises the troubling possibility that the armed forces have been infiltrated by an international conspiracy of climate scientists, tree-hugging environmentalists, and socialist college professors, in which case we can expect soldiers to start confiscating SUVs and hauling their drivers off to compulsory re-education camps. This is surely an obvious place for a stalwart anti-environmentalist like Representative Darrell Issa to start an investigation. The House Oversight Committee, which Issa chairs, needs to start issuing subpoenas; let’s get to the bottom of this!
But wait — could it be that military analysts know something these legislators don’t? Perhaps in their eagerness to pander to the tea-partiers in their district, congressional climate-change denialists have been ignoring facts that don’t suit their ideologies. Perhaps the corporations that fund their campaigns have more influence on our lawmakers than the opinions of our nation’s military leaders.
I don’t know. Sounds pretty far-fetched to me.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots irresponsibility James Hansen scientific consensus
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 23: Houston, You Have A Problem…
The Houston Chronicle reports on the latest cloud of bafflegab from the denialist masterminds:
Four dozen former NASA astronauts, engineers and scientists have written a letter to the space agency decrying its advocacy of “catastrophic” climate change.
“As former NASA employees, we feel that NASA’s advocacy of an extreme position, prior to a thorough study of the possible overwhelming impact of natural climate drivers is inappropriate,” states the letter, addressed to administrator Charles Bolden.
“We request that NASA refrain from including unproven and unsupported remarks in its future releases and websites on this subject.”
Among the signatories are seven Apollo astronauts, including Harrison “Jack” Schmitt and Walt Cunningham, and two former directors of Johnson Space Center.
Although not explicitly named in their letter, the 49 signatories are unhappy with the outspoken head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James Hansen, who is one of the world’s most prominent climate scientists.
Jackasses. Sent April 14:
When a planetary physician of the highest possible stature excoriates those who are hindering meaningful action on climate change, it’s news. “A moral issue comparable with slavery” — strong words from James Hansen, a man with unimpeachable scientific credentials and a self-evident ethical core. How can those poor oppressed conservative think-tanks fight back? It’s a standard move in the climate-change denial business: when something happens that might move public opinion even a little bit toward recognition of a global emergency, they’ll launch a Letter Signed By Many People (LSBMP).
Dr. Hansen is a NASA employee? They’ll counter with an LSBMP signed by forty-nine NASA astronauts and engineers (including a few scientists for good measure). Sounds impressive, but none of the signatories are climate scientists. Their use of the LSBMP to deliver spurious expertise confirms the moral force of Dr. Hansen’s argument. The scientific argument, of course, was settled long ago.
Warren Senders
atheism Education environment Politics: assholes denialists evolution idiots Republicans theocracy
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 20: He That Troubleth His Own House…
This is entirely expected — but it still sucks:
NASHVILLE — Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam today allowed a controversial bill allowing teachers to discuss the “weaknesses” of evolution and other scientific theories to become law without his signature.
It is the first time Haslam, a Republican, has refused to sign a bill passed by the GOP-led General Assembly.
The legislation has been derided by critics nationwide as a modern-day “monkey bill,” a reference to a 1920s Tennessee law that outlawed the teaching of evolution and spurred the arrest and trial of Dayton, Tenn., teacher John Scopes in the infamous 1925 “Monkey Trial.”
“I have reviewed the final language of HB 368/SB 893 and assessed the legislation’s impact,” Haslam said in a statement. “I have also evaluated the concerns that have been raised by the bill. I do not believe that this legislation changes the scientific standards that are taught in our schools or the curriculum that is used by our teachers.
“However,” Haslam added, “I also don’t believe that it accomplishes anything that isn’t already acceptable in our schools.”
I wish they’d never been allowed to rejoin the Union. Sent April 11:
Although he’s allowing HB 368/SB 893 to become law without his signature, Governor Haslam cannot avoid soiling his fingers on a dirty piece of legislation. The bill’s language is entirely disingenuous. It is absolutely obvious that this is an attempt to undermine a genuine and robust scientific consensus under the guise of “discussing the weaknesses” in scientific opinion on evolution and climate change.
Will Tennessee’s teachers really explore the relationship between feedback and forcing in climate models — or will they promulgate attractive and convenient pseudo-facts (“carbon dioxide is our friend!”) offered by well-funded denialist groups? Will they explore the relationship between punctuated equilibrium and phyletic gradualism in our understanding of evolution — or will they offer attractive and convenient pseudo-facts from well-funded creationist groups?
When the world’s climate is perilously close to spinning entirely out of equilibrium, we can no longer afford the luxury of substituting ignorance for knowledge under the guise of “teaching the controversy.” This will not end well — for Tennessee, for America, or for the world.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots media irresponsibility timescale
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 18: More Pathetic Whining From Aggrieved Hippies
The Lincoln, NE Journal-Star has an editorial. It’s shrill:
Temperatures have retreated to levels closer to the norm in Lincoln, but the heavy green foliage of trees and the profusion of blooming flowers bear witness that March 2012 was the warmest on record in the Capital City.
Pleasant as it was, the numbers represent an extreme.
The average high was 69.5 degrees, 17.2 degrees above normal. The temperature soared to 91 degrees March 31, setting a record for that day and tying the all-time high for March. It was the second record daily high set during the month. A high of 83 degrees on March 13 topped the previous record of 80 degrees.
Still fresh in memory is the weather extreme of 2011, when snow and rain created record runoff of more than 60 million acre-feet of water in the Missouri River basin. The usual runoff is 24.8 million acre-feet. The previous record was 49 million acre-feet.
Such weather extremes should be expected more frequently as global warming continues, according to a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In 2010, Russia recorded its hottest summer in 500 years. Last year, rainfall in Thailand was 80 percent more than average.
“It’s very clear that heat waves are on the increase both in terms of numbers and duration,” said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the panel. “Another important finding is the fact that extreme precipitation events are on the increase.”
It’s often been said during the debate on global warming that “weather is not climate.” Weather is short-term. Climate is long-term.
Still, it’s worth remembering that in January the USDA released a new plant hardiness zone map that showed most of Nebraska is in a warmer zone than it was in 1990, the last time the map was updated.
The USDA cautioned that the change was based on only 30 years of weather data gathered from 1976 to 2005, and should not be considered evidence of global warming. The trend would have to persist for 50 or 100 years to be considered climate change, the USDA said.
So, in a long-term sense, the warmest March on record for Lincoln is just another dot that must be connected to many others to be considered a trend. Nonetheless, on a 91-degree March afternoon, it was difficult to believe that some still deny that global warming is real.
I haven’t checked the comments yet. I’m sure they’re full of denialist drivel. Sent April 9:
Yes, the unseasonably warm temperatures are a troubling omen of a future in which climatic extremes become the new norm — but they’re unlikely to change the mind of the climate change denialists who long ago decided global warming is a hoax/conspiracy/liberal plot. A mere plenitude of evidence would hardly be enough to convince people who have repeatedly shown their contempt for scientific truth, and indeed for science itself. The multi-decade effort by the Republican party to base policy on ideology rather than facts has been assisted by a complaisant media establishment that for years has abdicated journalistic responsibility in favor of a specious false equivalency between opposing viewpoints; the result may well be toxic to the survival of our civilization and our species. We — all of us — need to be thinking about the long term; if humanity is to succeed, both our politics and media must be transformed. Ideologically motivated ignorance is a luxury our species can no longer afford.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republicans
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 16: My Ding-A-Ling?
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a columnist named Reg Henry, who takes on a certain frothy former Senator in a meticulous piece of dissection:
While nobody can be certain that the early spring here in the East is a manifestation of global warming, you know the old saying: Something that looks like a groundhog, walks like a groundhog and makes weather forecasts like a groundhog is probably a groundhog that gets his information from talk radio, as filtered through men in top hats.
Indeed, the party that looks out for the interests of men in top hats is pretty much united in the belief that global warming is a hoax — in particular, man’s alleged role in it.
Pennsylvania’s own Rick Santorum has been in the forefront of such remarks, in the belief that the Republican primaries are a competition to say the stupidest things. This strategy has been quite successful for him. While he won’t win, he hopes to parlay his victories into an appointment as Grand Inquisitor in the Romney administration.
Unfortunately, the climate — not knowing concepts such as conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat — just goes on getting weirder and weirder, pretty much as climate change theory predicts. Tragically, this erratic weather is also becoming more deadly each passing year, with hurricanes, tornadoes and floods of growing ferocity.
Of course, in bursts of sanity, some conservative politicians admit that perhaps the world’s scientists have a point, but the perpetrators are soon forced to recant lest they be considered elitist — which these days, as you know, means anyone who thinks.
This was enjoyable. Sent April 8:
Rick Santorum’s massive ignorance would be a lot funnier if he didn’t represent a worldview shared by millions of Americans. While Pennsylvania’s embarrassment of an ex-senator embodies resurgent American anti-intellectualism, there’s no doubt he’s happy to use the products of the past few centuries’ worth of scientific progress (confining ourselves to the letter “A,” these might include antibiotics, automobiles, airplanes, anesthesia, and antiseptics, without which Mr. Santorum’s life would probably have been very different).
Apparently, science is invalid only when it contradicts the senator’s ideology. Nowhere is this more problematic than in his position on global climate change, which he believes is a worldwide scientific conspiracy (one which, curiously, includes the Pope, whose infallibility doesn’t seem to extend that far).
Deliberate ignorance of the facts is both intellectually and morally irresponsible; for human civilization to survive the burgeoning climate crisis, denialists like Rick Santorum must remove their mental chastity belts.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republicans
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 15: Harper Valley PTA
Neela Banerjee writes in the LA Times about Tennessee’s embarrassing new legislation, which is eagerly awaiting its gubernatorial flourish before slime-spattering students throughout the state:
WASHINGTON — Tennessee is poised to adopt a law that would allow public schoolteachers to challenge climate change and evolution in their classrooms without fear of sanction, according to educators and civil libertarians in the state.
Passed by the state Legislature and awaiting Republican Gov. Bill Haslam’s signature, the measure is likely to stoke growing concerns among science teachers around the country that teaching climate science is becoming the same kind of classroom and community flash point as evolution. If it becomes law, Tennessee will become the second state, after Louisiana, to allow the teaching of alternatives to accepted science on climate change.
The Tennessee measure does not require the teaching of alternatives to scientific theories of evolution, climate change, human cloning and “the chemical origins of life.” Instead, the legislation would prevent school administrators from reining in teachers who expound on alternative hypotheses to those topics.
The measure’s primary sponsor, Republican state Sen. Bo Watson, said it was meant to give teachers the clarity and security to discuss alternative ideas to evolution and climate change that students may have picked up at home and want to explore in class.
Morons. Sorry — that should be Morans; my bad. Sent April 7:
When contemporary conservatives want schools to “teach the controversy,” it’s a sure bet they’re referring to controversies they’ve created themselves. Tennessee’s new legislation is an excellent example of this; the notion that science teachers are somehow restricted by requiring them to actually teach science is a fabrication of the evangelical subset of American conservatism.
The arguments within climatology concern the details of feedback and forcing mechanisms in Earth’s environment, and what they portend for the future of the planet and its inhabitants; the human causes of global warming are as fully settled as the basic processes of Darwinian evolution. Assertions to the contrary are either mendacious or ignorant; probably both.
But what the hell — let’s teach the controversy: is Marxist economics valid? Is the Earth flat? Does your astrological sign influence your life? Is Elvis alive? Is Paul dead? Is there really a Flying Spaghetti Monster? Welcome to school.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes idiots Republicans
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 13: Whodunnit?
Krishneil Narayan writes in the Fiji Times, attempting to clarify an important distinction:
There is always much confusion between the terms Global Warming and Climate Change (CC). Many a times, people young and old, find it difficult to define these terms and use it interchangeably. But to tackle the devastating impacts of the changing climate and its threats to humanity, it is important to be able to differentiate the fine line stuck between the two.
The international scientific community agrees that there has been a significant change in global climate in recent years. The Earth’s climate is changing at an alarming rate.
In most places around the world, average temperatures are rising. Scientists have observed a warming trend beginning around the late 1800s.
According to the leading international scientific body for the assessment of climate change consisting of some 4000 climate scientists — the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the reason behind this trend is global warming and CC due to human activity. Humans releasing heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is the basis of the warming trend.
Credit where credit is due. Sent April 6:
As your article makes clear, the warming atmosphere and the changing climate are interdependent and mutually reinforcing. But there is more to this than terminological niceties. The phrase “climate change” was first suggested in 2002, by Frank Luntz, a public relations specialist for the U.S. Republican Party, as a way of deflecting increasing public concern about “global warming.” The new words sounded less ominous, and therefore less likely to trigger demand for meaningful policy responses — anathema to the petrol-funded Bush administration.
In a rare turn of events, the term generated by a political consultant more accurately describes the situation, and is now routinely used by climatologists. But the grim irony of the situation is that Mr. Luntz’ strategic euphemism enabled the United States and its industrialized allies to postpone indefinitely the changes that must be made if our species and our civilization are to prosper in the coming centuries.
Warren Senders
Education environment: denialists idiots media irresponsibility
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 8: The International Homework Alarmist Conspiracy!
Anne Zammit, in the Times of Malta, notes that the time for denial is long past:
Scepticism is essential for good science but the time for debate has long been over. Scientists (notably climatologists) reached consensus that global warming is happening but it took decades for the problem to penetrate public discourse.
Indications that human activity is having an effect on the climate are nothing new:
In 1896, Swedish Nobel laureate Svante Arrhenius presented his findings that human activities releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere could change the earth’s climate.
Scientists Charles Keeling and Roger Revelle demonstrated in the 1950s that a large part of the carbon dioxide released from the burning of coal, oil and gas was remaining in the atmosphere because the oceans couldn’t absorb it fast enough.
A scientific advisory panel warned US President Lyndon Johnson of the dangers of adding greenhouses gases to the atmosphere back in 1965.
By 2007 there were no credible scientific sceptics left to challenge the broad projections and underlying scientific theory of climate change.
Two years later the National Academies of Science of the world’s major industrialised nations issued an unprecedented joint statement on the reality of climate change and the need for immediate action.
Despite overwhelming evidence, a cell of climate change deniers showed up for a debate last month in Valletta, organised by the Euro Media forum, a discussion platform which “celebrates freedom of expression while respecting diversity in society”.
Letters like this one are easy; the media’s incredible irresponsibility is a ludicrous target. Sent April 1:
From schoolchildren shirking homework to cardiac patients disregarding the advice of their doctors, there’s no shortage of people who act as if ignoring a crisis will make it vanish. But the psychological mechanisms of denial are not the only thing to blame for the widespread rejection of the scientific reality of global warming.
Imagine a world in which the simple existence of heart disease was vigorously disputed; a world where the media promulgated an equivalency between concerned pulmonary specialists and those proclaiming that heart attacks and COPD are fabrications of an international conspiracy. It sounds bizarre — but it’s analogous to the way many news outlets address the issue of climate change.
Climate scientists are, in essence, “planetary physicians.” While their diagnosis is scary and their advice inconvenient, we owe it to our descendants to stop pretending that the problem will go away if we don’t acknowledge it.
Warren Senders
And it’s printed.